It was a privilege and honour for IUCN to host its first-ever CEO Summit, and provide a platform for many of our partners and allies in building business momentum for a nature-positive future. 

Four years ago, we started this journey and we planned a series of events to ensure that business leaders and companies raised their ambition level and increased their understanding around why nature is so crucial to them. It started with Act4Nature in Paris in July 2018, followed by the Business for Nature coalition virtual event - Building Business Resilience - in June 2020. Then, in January 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a One Planet Summit in Paris.

All along the way, IUCN has had clear and deliberate objectives to ensure business and the private sector are at the table, not only on the menu. The goal was to enable business leaders to truly participate in the IUCN World Conservation Congress, not only to showcase their commitments but to engage with IUCN Members, experts, indigenous peoples and youth.    

This CEO Summit brought together companies representing US $1.1 trillion of market capitalisation and responsible for selling more than $600 billion annually in products and services worldwide. Coincidentally, this number is close to the finance gap that needs to be invested in biodiversity conservation every year, if we want to reverse nature loss.  As IUCN Director General Dr Bruno Oberle noted during his address, these businesses have the ability to shift consumption patterns and investment flows towards a more nature-positive economy, and we need to help them do so. 

By organising three distinct panels, we were able to have a broad representation from various sectors, including food and beverage, fashion, forestry, cosmetics, energy, water and waste management and logistics/shipping, along with experts on public finance, sustainable land management and human rights as well as the French employers association, representing 190,000 small, medium and large enterprises.  

The first panel highlighted the need for effective collaboration across value chains – from efforts at the farm-level to build regenerative agricultural systems and nature-based solutions to the corporate-level to better measure the impacts and dependencies on nature. OP2B Coalition Director Florence Jeantet, who chaired the session, recognised the role IUCN and its Members can play by providing these companies with the necessary tools, and noted it was the responsibility of everyone to hold companies accountable.

The second panel, moderated by The Nature Conservancy CEO Jennifer Morris, challenged the energy majors on how their plans are incorporating nature in the transition towards a low carbon economy. Veolia, a champion in water and waste management, reminded us how the circular economy mimics what nature does and how logical it is for some sectors to abandon the linear process of take, use and dispose, and transform their business models into a virtuous loop of reusing, recycling and regenerating the scarce natural resources humanity depends on.

The last panel focused on the enabling conditions required to move to a nature-positive and inclusive economy. Chaired by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development President and CEO Peter Bakker, this panel included Malawi’s Minister of Forestry and Natural Resources, together with the Global Environment Facility CEO Carlos Manuel Rodriquez and the Sustainably Forestry Initiative President and CEO Kathy Abusow.  All of them confirmed that radical and unusual collaboration is essential.

If we want to achieve sustainable development, it will require all IUCN constituencies to engage with business. We should not treat them as the enemy or 'cash cow', but as an ally in accelerating the change needed. Also, it is important to acknowledge that we will not agree on everything. 

Progressive businesses, however, understand there is a need to move from a short-term profit making system to a longer-term, value-building economy that collectively addresses the dual biodiversity and climate crises.

The CEO Summit was only the kick-off with business at the IUCN Congress. Numerous other events followed, such as the High-level Dialogue on Nature-based Recovery, the Economics and Finance stream, the Business & Nature Hub and many more.  In addition to a clear call for greater collaboration by the private sector, I witnessed a tremendous impatience on the part of business to act and get to work, even if the policies and solutions are not perfect, as the US actor Harrison Ford underscored in his address at Congress. 

Business leaders came to the IUCN Congress to show their support for moving the conservation agenda forward. However, some also came to be challenged and to ask for help from the conservation community in setting robust targets and indicators to measure their progress on nature.

IUCN, as a Union, showed it has the power to mobilise key actors of society, including business. IUCN demonstrated that it is ready to drive a new economic and financial system that truly accounts for nature risk and rewards nature-positive stewards. Finally, IUCN has the science-based policies, knowledge and tools to help build new business models that can drive the fundamental changes required to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change, and help us meet the global Sustainable Development Goals. 

As the Marseille Manifesto underscores, we still have a 'window of opportunity' to value, protect and invest in nature for our collective future, but we cannot afford to squander it.